Monthly Archives: October 2014

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Hello! I think the Emotional Cleansing series will be a long one because I have so much to share with you about feeling your emotions fully and releasing them fully and how important this is for your health. You must tend to your INNER emotional environment, because your life is your creation.

Our world is at a great moment of expansion. More and more physicians and scientists are aligning their beliefs and practices with the latest scientific discoveries: thoughts, emotions, intentions and feelings affect the physical body as much as, if not even more, than the foods and liquids ingested, the amount and quality of sleep and the levels of physical activity achieved.

You create your external world with your thoughts and feelings first, because your actions reflect how you feel and what you think.

You think, you feel, you act, you react… these processes create trails in our emotional system.The physical responses to your many emotions vary from well-being to distress, from tightness to release, from inner chemical balance to distortion, from proper organ function to impeded organ function. Every cell responds to your emotional state.

“The tendency to ignore our emotions is old-think, a remnant of the still-reigning paradigm that keeps us focused on the material level of health, the physicality of it. But the emotions are a key element in self- care because they allow us to enter into the body-mind conversation. By getting in touch with our emotions, both by listening to them and directing them through the psychosomatic network, we gain access to the healing wisdom that is everyone’s natural biological right.

And how do we do this? First by acknowledging and claiming our feelings, not just the so-called positive ones. Anger, grief, fear – these emotional experiences are not negative in themselves; in fact, they are vital for our survival. We need anger to define boundaries, grief to deal with our loses, and fear to protect ourselves from danger. It’s only when these feelings are denied, so that they cannot be easily and rapidly processed through the system and released, that the situation becomes toxic, as discussed earlier. And the more we deny them, the greater the ultimate toxicity, which often takes the form of an explosive release of a pent-up emotion. That’s when emotion can be damaging to oneself and others, because its expression becomes overwhelming, sometimes even violent.

So my advice is to express all of your feelings, regardless of whether you think they are acceptable, and then let them go. Buddhists understand this when they talk about non-grasping, or non-attachment to experience. By letting all emotions having their natural release, the “bad” ones are transformed to “good” ones, and, in Buddhist terms, we are then liberated from suffering. When your emotions are moving and your chemicals flowing, you will experience feelings of freedom, hopefulness, joy, because you are in a healthy, “whole” state.”

Yesterday I explained how emotions that are left uncleared and unresolved create residues that remain in your body for days, weeks, months or years, until you fully release them.

Now you might wonder “How do I know if there are any emotional residues within me?”

Here’s how you find out: tune in with yourself for a second and think of an emotionally challenging situation that happened a while ago. It can be anything: a fight with a loved one, the death of a loved pet, loosing your job, feeling betrayed by a lover or a friend, knowing that you betrayed someone’s trust, failing an exam, something you feel ashamed of. What do you feel right now while remembering this event? Can you still feel an emotional charge when you think about it, or you are just neutral with respect to it?

Are you still feeling now what you felt back then? If you do, then that is the uncleared emotional residue.

Your general, overall sense of fulfillment, well-being, ease and joy depends upon the level of emotional debris that you have been carrying around with you for months or even years.

The cleaner your internal emotional scenery is, the better you feel.

If in this very moment you do not feel good about yourself and your past or current circumstances, you will benefit tremendously from an emotional cleanse.

You clean you home, car and office, you take baths and showers to cleanse your body, you workout and sweat to release toxins and you follow dietary cleansing protocols. However, you neglect your emotional cleanliness. Why? It is very simple: because you were not taught about its importance in your life and about its effects on your health.

Below are only a few of the benefits of emotional cleansing programs and daily routines. By tending to your inner emotional health, your whole life will improve.

You will feel:

More YOURSELF than ever before

More balanced and calmer

A sense of renewed energy and joy of life

Energized and refreshed

Free and clear minded

More accepting of yourself, others and the events in your life

Understanding that there are things you can change and what to do about the things beyond your control

Many years back I came to understand that the way I was responding to other people’s actions, to events and life in general was primarily determined by my general emotional state, which in turn was defined by the total sum of everything that I had experienced in my life up to that point. I started to wonder what part of my actions was truly conscious and what part was just unconscious reaction. As at the time I did not have the answer, I made a pact with myself to find the truth and in order to do that I had to wipe my emotional slate clean. And so I started a powerful, sometimes joyful but many times heart wrenching journey of emotional clearing and cleansing.

I am very grateful for taking the steps to create a state of emotional cleanliness and today I am starting to share with you what I mean by that. I want you to start the process of cleansing at the emotional level, so that your life is made of conscious actions. I want you to be the creator of your life, not just “be lived” by the events and circumstances in your life.

Yesterday I was writing about the importance of healing the relationship you have with yourself.

Today is Day 1 of your emotional cleansing process. I call it EM-CLEANSE. I developed a program I use with my clients to teach this concept and show them how to clear their emotional slate so that it does not define how they respond to challenges, events, circumstances and other people’s actions. I want to share this concept with you. This is my gift to you, as a way of expressing my gratitude.

So let’s start.

Do you believe in less chemicals and a cleaner environment?

Do you care about the foods you eat and the products you use on your skin?

Do you believe in being clean and toxin free inside and out?

How about your emotional cleanliness?

Have you ever heard about this concept before?

They do not teach in schools about it, but its lack creates stress and distress in your life.

Left un-cleared, these feelings become emotional residues that create a build up which is detrimental to your general well-being and health and affects both your mental and physical states. If not fully expressed, emotions can and do create the emotional residues that remains in your body for days, weeks, months or years, until you fully release them.

Yesterday I received a question about allowing others to treat us with disrespect, even when we don’t want to be treated that way. The comment to my post said:

“I wonder if it’s even harder when you really knew you didn’t have to take it, but you did anyway. I guess that is a different emotion: shame.”

And my response was:

“I understand what you are saying, but think about it: if you were able to do it differently, you would have done it differently. Since you did not, it means that you were not really able to.”

Louise Hay says that at any given moment, we do what we think is best, with the understanding we have at the time and with the emotional intelligence we poses at the time. It all comes down to how much we value ourselves. When we truly value who we are, we are kind to ourselves and to other people. We do not treat ourselves unkindly, we respect everybody else and we do not allow others to do disrespect or treat us unkindly either.

Do you see? It is not about feeling shame because you let someone be unkind, mean, judgmental or controlling towards you. Shame is a very destructive emotion; shame chips away at your self-esteem and diminishes your life force. If you truly understand the level you were at in your opinion of yourself and what you thought you were worth and deserving of, then you do understand that you did the best you could at the time. At the time, you might have believed that you did not deserve to be treated with respect, with kindness and understanding. Feeling ashamed about it will not help you at all.

This is very powerful and I am grateful for having allowed this deep healing to take place. As I understood the fact that for many years I felt small, afraid and did not believe in my own value as a person, I started to heal my guilt, shame and feeling powerless. This is a process that we all need to go through in order to create the lives we desire. This process is not about feeling shame, it is about allowing our inner power to shine.

Today I am inviting you to look deep inside yourself and examine what was your belief about yourself at a time when you allowed another person to treat you with disrespect. As you heal your limiting beliefs, you will also heal your relationships.

As I wrote yesterday, I am grateful for the understanding that I am the only creator of my life and the freedom that comes from releasing blame. I am also very grateful for understanding that being angry with myself does not serve me or anyone else around me.

In my post two days ago I wrote that when anger comes up from somewhere deep inside yourself, there are two options:

1. You are angry with SOMEBODY ELSE for something they did or did not do

2. You are angry with YOURSELF for something you did or did not do

Yesterday I explained why you cannot be angry with somebody else for the things that are happening in your life. Today let’s look at OPTION 2: You are angry with YOURSELF.

Nobody else has the power to create YOUR life, but you. YOU are the only creator of your life and you are responsible for YOUR happiness ONLY.

In every situation that you are still angry about, YOU AND ONLY YOU were responsible for standing up for yourself and for having your own back. This means that you angry not with someone else, but WITH YOURSELF.

People say that this type of anger is even harder to let go of.

Is it, really?

With the greater understanding that you are not angry with others but with yourself, let’s work this part together as well. We are getting to the core of this anger issue.

Are THEY responsible for what they did or said and for how they treated you?

The answer is YES! Yes, THEY WERE AND ARE responsible for what THEY DID AND DO AND FOR WHAT THEY SAID OR STILL SAY. They are responsible for ALL THEIR ACTIONS.

And you are responsible for all YOUR actions!

Why did YOU allow others to treat you the way they did? Why did YOU take it? Why did YOU not say something when you really wanted to? Why did YOU not stand up for yourself?

The answer is very simple and will release the blame you might have for yourself: at the time, YOU DID NOT KNOW what else to do. You did not know that YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE how YOU want to be treated. You thought you had to stick it out, to be kind and patient and wait for the other to see the truth, to realize what they were doing to you and to see you for who you really are.

Well, you do not have to wait patiently until someone else realizes that you have the right to be treated with respect. You have to start treating yourself with respect.

With this deeper understanding of your old choices, look at yourself back then and acknowledge how afraid, lonely and small you really felt. If the YOU back then knew what you KNOW NOW, do you think the events would have taken the same turn? Of course not! You would have seen the signs and made your choices based on respect and love for yourself.

Would you be angry with a child because they don’t know how things work, stick a nail in the electrical outlet and get zapped? You would not be angry; you would be very concerned and teach them that electrical outlets are dangerous and could really hurt them. You would tell them that you love them and that you want them to be safe.

From an emotional perspective, back then YOU WERE A CHILD. So take a moment now and see the child that you were then, doing his or her best the only way they knew how. You did what you knew, how you knew it and with the understanding you had back then. Back then, you thought that electrical outlets were toys. But now you know they are not and you stay away from them.

Today I am grateful for the understanding that I am the only creator of my life and the freedom that comes from releasing blame. I want you to fully let go of past hurt, anger and blame and feel the amount of inner power that comes from this healing.

In yesterday’s post I wrote that when anger comes up from somewhere deep inside yourself, there are two options:

1. You are angry with SOMEBODY ELSE for something they did or did not do

2. You are angry with YOURSELF for something you did or did not do

Today let’s look at OPTION 1: You are angry with SOMEBODY ELSE.

First of all, I want you to understand that nobody else has the power to create YOUR life, but you. Not your parents, not your spouse/partner, not your job, not your bank account, not your friends or relatives; you are the sole creator of your experience. When you feel confused and being pulled in several directions it is because you do not fully understand yet that only YOU have the capacity to create your life as you desire it to be.

YOU are the only creator of your life and you are responsible for YOUR happiness ONLY. If you take care of your well-being, fulfillment and happiness first, you empower others to do the same; you will always have the resources to assist others, to offer help from your heart and to make a difference.

You are NOT responsible for making others happy, or behave in ways that they agree with or approve of.

Your efforts must be directed towards your authenticity: saying what you are feeling, and acting in ways that RESPECT AND HONOR WHO YOU ARE. There is nothing bad or wrong with what you feel, it is just a signal that some adjustments needs to be done by you, in your life, in order to restore or create your well-being. There are no labels for what you feel. It is not good or bad, it just is what it this in the moment.

What matters is what you CHOOSE to do about what you are feeling.

With this understanding, let’s go back to your being angry with somebody else. Since you are the only person capable of shaping YOUR life, why are you REALLY angry with them? You expected them to please you or at least meet you half way. You laid a large burden on their shoulders to behave a certain way and when things got hard, you felt hurt.

You had expectations of them and you got angry when THEY could not live up to YOUR expectation of what they were supposed to do. All along, you were the only one responsible for making it better, for changing it, for standing up for yourself and for standing behind yourself.

Buddha said:

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

Let go of the hot coal! The other person does not feel its intense heat, YOU ARE GETTING BURNED BY IT.

You are making others responsible for making it better, or keeping others responsible for having made it so hard for you, when they are not.

YOU are creating YOUR LIFE and they are creating theirs. Others may or may not meet you half way.

By choosing to remain angry, you keep giving away your strength and life force.

Here’s another big thing that I am very grateful for: I have learned that anger only hurts me. My being angry does not solve anything, but it can definitely poison my days and my nights. So I made a decision a long time ago to not spend any time on being angry; that is to not spend anymore time than the 90 seconds required for the anger to flush through my system. I wrote about the 90 second rule in my post on Day 9 .

I often talk to my clients about the healing power of letting go of anger. In one of my programs about emotional cleansing, I was asked the following question:

“Other people have really hurt me, how do I release this anger? How do I let it go? I am angry and I am hurting.”

Do you feel like this too? Are you angry because of something that someone else did? Ok, let’s talk about this. And when I am done answering this question, I will share with you one of the most powerful moments of my life. I will share with you the gift of my sister’s death.

Anger is what is left behind after circumstances, events and encounters that have not been easy for you and during which you felt that you were being hurt.

I want to tell you that there is nothing wrong with feeling anger. Since we are emotionally equipped for feeling it, it is meant to be part of our human existence. Anger puts us into motion, forces us to find answers and makes us take action. It is healthy to allow yourself to feel anger fully.

The important point is: HOW LONG are you going to stay angry for?

Remember the 90 Second Rule? That is all the time that your body needs to feel, process and let go of anger. If you are still angry days, weeks, months or even years after it all ended, you are doing so by choice.

Now, I need to stop here for a second, so that you can read the last sentence again.

Even though you might be feeling your anger rising right now at the very concept of your choosing your anger, think about it this way: anger is linked to blame. You are angry because you are blaming someone for your pain. You are caught in a vicious cycle of blame, in a burning ring of anger.

There are two options:

1. You are angry with SOMEBODY ELSE for something they did or did not do
2. You are angry with YOURSELF for something you did or did not do

I will explain these two options in my next post, so stay with me. This is important.